{"id":44602,"date":"2024-03-13T22:37:09","date_gmt":"2024-03-14T03:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=44602"},"modified":"2024-03-13T22:37:13","modified_gmt":"2024-03-14T03:37:13","slug":"craigs-antiunitarian-argument","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/craigs-antiunitarian-argument\/","title":{"rendered":"Craig&#8217;s antiunitarian argument"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My &#8220;<a aria-label=\"Antiunitarian Arguments from Divine Perfection (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/jat-ojs-baylor.tdl.org\/jat\/index.php\/jat\/article\/view\/449\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" class=\"ek-link\">Antiunitarian Arguments from Divine Perfection<\/a>&#8221; has been published by the excellent <em>Journal of Analytic Theology<\/em> since 2021. (It can be downloaded for free at the link above.) In it <strong>I critique arguments by Craig, Swinburne, and others, which go, very roughly, like this:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li class=\"\">Stage 1: Because God is perfect in thus-and-such way, God must (in some sense) be or contain <strong>more than one<\/strong> Person.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"\">Stage 2: Actually, when you think about it more, God must be at least 3 but less than 4 Persons, so: <strong>exactly 3 <\/strong>Persons.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In this new video below, Craig (quite reasonably) expresses <strong>skepticism about Stage 2<\/strong>; many Christian philosophers and theologians do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"nv-iframe-embed\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Why is God Only Three Persons and Not More?\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7bXIDh8EytI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a aria-label=\"But as I argue in my paper (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/jat-ojs-baylor.tdl.org\/jat\/index.php\/jat\/article\/view\/449\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" class=\"ek-link\">But as I argue in my paper<\/a>, he should be skeptical of Stage 1 too, as there I show why his Stage 1 argument <strong>from perfect love <\/strong>is unpersuasive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Stage 1 is a bit more popular than Stage 2. But Stage 1 alone is not so much an <em>a priori<\/em>, philosophical argument <em>for the Trinity<\/em> (since Stage 1 alone doesn&#8217;t prove exactly 3 Persons), but it&#8217;s rather <strong>an <em>antiunitarian <\/em>argument<\/strong>, an attempt to show that a &#8220;unipersonal god,&#8221; or rather, God as thought of by unitarian Christians, and also by many Jews and Muslims and other monotheists, is (despite initial appearances) <strong>metaphysically impossible<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>I suggest that Dr. Craig at this point owes us an answer<\/strong>; I claim that his antiunitarian argument stands refuted. So either I&#8217;m mistaken about that, or Dr. Craig should stop claiming that there is some cogent argument which shows the impossibility of a God who is a single Self. Ignoring the refutation at this point does not seem reasonable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Another big theological issue is raised by what he says at the end of the video.<\/strong> If he&#8217;s right that this is a divine attribute: <em>being tripersonal<\/em>&#8211;it follows that in his view none of the Persons of the Trinity is fully divine! <em>Or<\/em>: there are 12 divine Persons, if each of the three is fully divine and so is tripersonal! I think he must go with the first option, that none of the three Persons of the Trinity is fully divine. But in that he <strong>contradicts catholic creedal orthodoxy<\/strong>. Admittedly, he&#8217;s a bit ambivalent about that. But many Protestants assume that orthodoxy in that sense must be upheld at all costs. Many Craig fans care more about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In past work Dr. Craig has said openly <strong>that the Trinity is the only god.<\/strong> If that&#8217;s so, then the Father is <em>not <\/em>a god, and then he&#8217;s contradicting a clear teaching of the New Testament, which is that the Father is Jesus&#8217; god (e.g. Revelation 3:12), and so <em>is <\/em>a god (the only one). And some analytic theologians argue that this too is part of creedal orthodoxy. Think of the many creeds which start: &#8220;I believe in one God, the Father.&#8221; That can be argued, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I point out these costs of Craig&#8217;s Trinity theory in our forthcoming debate book <em>One God, Three Persons, Four Views<\/em>, edited by Dr. Chad McIntosh, although no one in that book really gets into these alleged philosophical proofs of the Trinity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is William Lane Craig touting a refuted antiunitarian argument?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44604,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[37,21,6,47,9,77,3,43,210],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apologetics","category-bible","category-complaints","category-papers","category-philosophy","category-protestant","category-theories","category-unitarianism","category-william-lane-craig"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44602"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44606,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44602\/revisions\/44606"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}